May 30, 1957

In
the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

May it please Your Excellency Most Reverend Archbishop
Ritter, Your Excellencies Most Reverend Archbishops and Bishops, Right
Reverend, Very Reverend, Reverend Fathers, beloved religious, family and
relatives of His Excellency Bishop Flavin, my good friend Your Excellency
Bishop Flavin, and all friends in Christ . . .

On this beautiful day, forty days after Easter, Our Lord took
leave of His Apostles and as He ascended into Heaven, two angels standing
nearby said to the Apostles, “Why stand ye here gazing into the Heavens?” That seemed to be the normal thing to
do. This was their Lord and their
Master? If He was taking leave of them,
why should they not look into the Heavens?
And yet there was the reprimand and the reason was the world is worth a
look! Heaven is only for those who have
completed their tasks and fulfilled their duties. Our Lord was practically saying, “I have sent
you into the world; therefore finish your work.” And because we are taking the
world seriously, there is being consecrated today the Archdiocesan Director of
one who is aiding the world. Now let us
meditate on the meaning of this ceremony. . . .

Our
Blessed Lord (after), as He prepared to ascend into Heaven, said to His
Apostles that they were to remain in Jerusalem for ten days and to wait for
power on high. Why should they not go
into the world immediately? Why wait for
ten days? Had they not received all the
powers? In the Gospel, which you just
heard, before the Ascension, our Blessed Lord had given them the power to
forgive sins. He gave them the power to
preach in His Name, to heal the sick, to baptize. He had already given them the power and the
authority to offer the sacrifice of the Mass and the memorial of His
death. Why should they wait for power on
high? Because the Apostles, up to that
point, were only priests. They had to
wait for ten days until the Holy Spirit would come to make them bishops. Notice that in the conferring of the
priesthood our Blessed Lord, as it was said, “breathed on them.” The breath is the only symbol that we have of
the Holy Spirit. First of all because
it’s the soul, life, it’s invisible, and it’s something that lies too deep for
words. The Son can express Himself by
words. Now the breathing on them was the
giving of the measure of the Spirit. But
notice that on Pentecost, it was a wind not a breath! We make a distinction between a breeze and a
gale and a wind. So too, Sacred
Scripture makes that distinction. Up to
this time they had been given the truth, but they had not been given the Spirit
of truth! So our Lord said “It is
fitting for you that I go. If I go not,
the Spirit of Truth will not come unto you.”
In the greatest mind of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, makes this distinction
that I have just made for you. He said
that the priests receive the power to offer sacrifice, and to administer
sacraments and to preach but to the Bishops was given the authority, adostendendam
doctrinam, for the manifestation
of truth and of the doctrine of the Church.

So
on this blessed day, we are witnessing a greater measure of the Holy Spirit
poured out upon a truly great and apostolic priest. Now this distinction that I have made,
between the priest and the bishop, is even in the life of Our Lord in an
analogical way. Suppose we put it in a
catechetical form to make it interesting.
When did the Son of God become a priest or was He always a priest? And when did He become a bishop? Our Lord is called the Bishop of our souls in
the Scriptures. Was the Son of God a
priest in Heaven? No. He became a priest when the oil of divinity
anointed His humanity. He became a
priest in His Incarnation. For that
moment, He was given a body. He was
given the raw material of a sacrifice.
It was now possible for Him to be both priest and victim on the
cross. So, on the cross He would be
upright as the priest. He would be
prostrate as the victim. “Corpus optisti
mihi.” “A body thou hast fitted to me” (Hebrews 10:5).

Now,
there came a greater measure of the Spirit to His humanity on the day when He
was baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist.
Then it was the Heavens were opened.
God the Father spoke and said, “This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well
pleased.” And the Holy Spirit descended
in the form of a dove. Men receive the
Spirit under the symbols of water, of oil, as His Excellency has just received
it, water, fire, wind. But, the Son of
God received the Spirit under the symbol of a complete organic form, namely
that of a dove, to indicate the very fullness of the Spirit and notice that,
that was the moment when our Blessed Lord began teaching. See how it is related to what St. Thomas says
about the, the manifestation of the truth and the witnessing to the
doctrine? That is why we always speak of
the episcopacy as the fullness of the priesthood.

Now
St. Paul says it is a good work to desire the episcopacy. But the reason St. Paul said it was a good
work to desire the episcopacy was because in those days everyone who became a
bishop was martyred. And today many are
martyred.

Now
there are three practical conclusions that follow from this meditation. The first is this: that a Bishop is
consecrated for the world not for a diocese.
A diocese is a sign for jurisdictional reasons for the purpose of
government, but the consecration itself commits a bishop to the world. It is therefore very fitting that the one who
was consecrated today has already world interests. And though you good people of the Archdiocese
of St. Louis are to take pride in the fact that one of your sons has been
raised to the burden of the episcopacy, nevertheless, the very presence of
other bishops from other diocese manifest the fact that the whole world is
rejoicing. His Excellency Bishop Flavin
today becomes, for example, part of the bishops whom he serves, like, like the
Bishop of Shanghai who’s a kind of a “Mindzenty” of China, of the bishops
behind the Iron Curtain. This is a world
event! And not only does it bind him to
the world, but in virtue of this consecration, he also is given a very
exceptional and extraordinary power. A
priest cannot beget priests. The
priesthood would die without the episcopacy.
Therefore when a bishop is consecrated, the Church assures the
propagation of the priesthood. This is a
very fitting day for His Excellency, Archbishop Ritter, to have a spiritual son. For His Excellency was ordained forty years
ago today. This is therefore a double
reason for rejoicing. And, when I was in
Rome just a few weeks ago, a couple of Cardinals told me that one of the
outstanding Archbishops in the United States, for an unmeasured love of the
Church throughout the world, is the Archbishop of St. Louis. And I know that His Excellency Bishop Flavin
is very happy to receive the spirit of Archbishop Ritter. And those of us who know His Excellency
Bishop Flavin well, also know that those who are ordained by him, in years to
come, will be as proud of their father as he is proud of his spiritual father
today.

And
this last and final reflection, about the Bishop, we said that the Bishop is
the sign of the preservation and the continuation and the manifestation of
truth. Perhaps, in order to understand
that well, let us seemingly digress. You
remember reading the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew there is a tremendously
long genealogy there of forty-two names broken into three distinct groups of
fourteen each in which there is a genealogy of our Lord carried back to
Abraham. Luke carries it back, of
course, farther. Now in this genealogy
of both of these evangelists, there are names mentioned that do not seem to
mean very much for example: Ram begot Amminadab, Amminadab begot Nahshon,
Nahshon begot Salmon. Will, why should
Sacred Scripture give us this pedigree at the very beginning of the Gospel of
Our Lord? In order to show that our
Blessed Lord was tied up with all humanity!
Why, like a great river this pedigree of humanity runs through the
course of history! Some of the names
indeed are important like a David, like a Jesse, like a Solomon and others are
unimportant like Ram, like an Amminadab, like a Nahshon. But it makes no difference when they all are
mentioned! It means that our Blessed
Lord comes full-blown into history with this tremendous genealogy and
attachment to the whole human race! Some
are good, some are bad but He is bound to the world and to men, whom He is to
save. Now the Bishop is in relationship
to the truth of Christ as the genealogy in Matthew is related to humanity. In other words, if we wish to know, today,
the truth of the Church, how it has come down to us, it has come down to us
through the Apostles, through their successors under the leadership of Peter
and His successors. How do we know the
Resurrection took place? Not just
because it is written in the Gospels, but because we have had some of our
ancestors present there! The Apostles were
there! They bear witness to the
Resurrection. That’s how we know that
the Resurrection took place! And so here
we’re just adding one name, not a minor name like Ram and Amminadab and Nahshon
but a great name, that will assure this continuity of truth from Christ on
until His second coming as the genealogies attach Christ back to Adam and to
Abraham. And in the glory of this day,
since he is attached to the truth of Christ now by consecration, we cannot at
the same time forget that he has been attached to Christ by the sanctity of his
life. And if there was any way of
describing the apostolic labors of Bishop Flavin, it would be to say, as it was
said of Our Lord, “He went about doing good.” And may his good father and
mother, since they have begotten one so Christ-like, find special joy in the
words that were spoken by Christ Himself from the cross; this time words of joy
and rightful praise: “Behold thy Son a
Bishop of the Church.” God love you.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Thanks to "friend of Sheen" Anita Buonincontro and others the Archbishop Fulton Sheen - Servant of All movie was shown at St. Walter's Parish in Roselle, IL on August 23, 2013. The parish collected over 5 bins full of school supplies for a Catholic school on the west side of Chicago. Thank you Jean for taking pictures for this "SAM" event.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The idea of a “Holy Day of Obligation” reflects a Christian
Culture in which certain religious festivals were so significant that people
would take the day off, rest, pray, gather with family and friends. Businesses
and shops would close. Everyone would
enjoy a “Sabbath-like” rest during the week.
We still see some of this attitude to celebrate a national day of
Thanksgiving and the Birth of Our Lord.

Sadly, in our secularist society, holy days are replaced by
state holidays. Most of us get the day
off to celebrate Labor Day – it is often not so easy to celebrate the
Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven. This
Thursday is a Holy day of obligation. It
is a grave sin to consciously decide to skip Mass. However, rather than focus on simply “not
sinning,” perhaps Assumption day can be reclaimed as a blessed excuse to
celebrate the “end of summer” with family and friends. Maybe you can’t take the whole day off, but
go out to lunch with friends, take your children or grandchildren to get ice
cream. Have a mid-week cookout.

I am leaving you with some of Sheen’s thoughts on the Assumption
and maybe you can share them with your friends and family. The Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady
is a great feast, worthy of a day of rest, prayer and celebration. Let’s take back a sense of the sacred-party
in our busy world.

Sincerely,

Msgr. Stanley Deptula

Executive Director, Archbishop Sheen Foundation

“Now in definition of the Assumption, it has to give hope to
the creature of despair. Modern despair is
the effect of a disappointed hedonism and centers principally around sex and
death. The Assumption affirms not sex but Love. Love, like fire, burns upward, since it is
basically desire. It seeks to become
more and more united with the object that is loved. This ‘pull’ on our hearts by the Spirit of
God is always present, and it is only our refusing wills and the weakness of
our bodies as a result of sin which keep us earth-bound. If God exerts a gravitational pull on all
souls, given the intense love of Our Lord for His Blessed Mother which
descended, and the intense love of Mary for Her Lord which ascended, there is
created a suspicion that love at this stage would be so great as ‘to pull the
body with it.’ Given further an immunity
from original sin, there would not be in the Body of Our Lady the dichotomy,
tension, and opposition that exists in us between body and soul. If the distant moon moves all the surging
tides of earth, then the love of Mary for Jesus and the love of Jesus for Mary
should result in such an ecstasy as ‘to lift her out of this world.’ One thing is certain: the Assumption is easy
to understand if one loves God deeply, but it is hard to understand if one
loves not.

With one stroke of an infallible dogmatic pen, the Church
lifts the sacredness of love out of sex without denying the role of the body in
love. Here is one body that reflects in
its uncounted hues the creative love of God.
To a world that worships the body, the Church now says: ‘There are two
bodies in heaven, one the glorified human nature of Jesus, the other the
assumed human nature of Mary. Love is
the secret of the Ascension of one and the Assumption of the other, for Love
craves unity with its Beloved. The Son
returns to the Father in the unity of Divine Nature; and Mary returns to Jesus
in the unity of human nature. Her
nuptial flight is the event to which our whole generation moves.’

Shall she, as the garden in which grew the lily of divine
sinlessness and the red rose of the passion of redemption, be delivered over to
the weeds and be forgotten by the Heavenly Gardener? Would not one communion preserved in grace
through life ensure a heavenly immortality?
No grown men and women would like to see the home in which they were
reared subjected to the violent destruction of a bomb, even though they no
longer lived in it. Neither would
Omnipotence, Who tabernacle Himself within Mary, consent to see His fleshly
home subjected to the dissolution of the tomb.
Shall not the Divine Life go back in search of His living cradle and
take that ‘flesh-girt paradise’ to Heaven with Him. She who is the mother of the Eucharist,
escapes the decomposition of death.

Mary becomes the first human person to realize the
historical destiny of the faithful as members of Christ’s mystical Body, beyond
time, beyond death, and beyond judgment. By her Assumption she goes ahead like
her Son to prepare a place for us. Mary
always seems to be the Advent of what is in store for man. She anticipates
Christ for nine months, as she bears Heaven within her; she anticipates His
Passion at Cana and His Church at Pentecost. Now in the last great Doctrine of
the Assumption, she anticipates heavenly glory, and the definition comes at a
time when men think of it least.”